And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold.

The castle shrieks in winter, but he rather likes the sound. The wind punishes anyone who steps in or steps out. You turn a corner in an empty corridor and an icy draught catches your heart. You open a window and you turn into stone.

She has answered out of turn in class again, but she is punctual for her detention. Resolute and resigned at the same time, Hermione Granger steps into his study and her eyes are slightly darkened from sleeplessness. This is the last winter she will spend at Hogwarts and he can sense her impatience, the impatience of all seven years who are so close to freedom, they can taste it.

She gingerly places her schoolbag on a chair by the door.

"Come sit, Miss Granger."

For the first time, the wakeful sleep seems to dissipate. Hermione is focused. Professor Snape rarely asks her to sit down. As a rule, he points to a door behind his desk, the one that opens into his private storage. There, she sorts and stacks ingredients, cleans and repeats.

It is no secret he gives her detentions on purpose. Not out of spite, although she is quite sure he holds her in contempt, but because she is the only one who can get it right, who can reinstate order into his chaos.

"Must I tell you twice?" he demands in the familiar, sententious voice. He is grading assignments at his desk. To a casual observer, he is barely looking at her, but he watches each movement from behind a screen of nonchalance. He senses her reluctance and marks his displeasure by furrowing his eyebrows.

Hermione obeys at last and sits opposite him, her eyes travelling to the papers in front of him.

"Here," he says and pushes the stack towards her. "You will find a quill to your right. Dip it into red ink and commence."

Hermione is startled, but not entirely surprised. He has always taken advantage of her skills during detentions, but never quite to this degree. She can't really believe he would entrust her with something of this nature. This isn't his private order, this is a public affair. But she shakily grabs the quill that is standing idly on the edge of the desk and holds it in her fingers until its weight becomes non-distinct.

"Well?"

She has to dip her quill into his pot of ink. The gesture feels somewhat sacrilegious. She can't remember if she has ever shared ink with anyone. She is not generous with such things, Ron and Harry should know.

But Hermione's face does not betray her inner suspension. The formality of the settings returns with expediency as her eyes fall on a third-year essay about the properties of Dittany. She has already spotted a colossal mistake in the very first sentence. The student has written that Dittany cures injured skin, which is absolutely false; Dittany will only make skin grow over a wound, but it does not eliminate or sanitize the damaged tissue. The quill scratches the paper sharply as she begins to write diligently.

He sees her nimble fingers gripping the quill, making it glide in circles, but never letting it slack. She writes furiously, contentedly, quietly. Her mind is spilling out on the page in rapid successions of names and numbers and measurements. She is detached from the scenery now and he recognizes the aloofness that carries her through any intellectual endeavour. Her face is tightly wound. And then, unexpectedly, it loosens.

She laughs. "Oh, Merlin!"

The laughter is swallowed into the winter evening, but its aftermath is painful.

She has forgotten where she is. Otherwise, she would have never let this outburst escape her lips. She looks up, mortified. The disruption is a one-time occurrence. She has never so much as smiled during a detention.

Professor Snape simply stares at her, his expression neither approving, nor taxing.

"What is the source of your amusement, Miss Granger?"

"I am – sorry, Professor. I found an absurd mistake in one of the essays. I apologize -"

"Do share." His voice implies that he would not care to hear, but that she ought to tell him anyway.

She hesitates. Her throat has dried up.

"Well, someone made a confusion between a Bezoar and a…bison."

One corner of his mouth seems to twitch and go up an inch. She has seen him smirk before. Maliciously or self-satisfactorily. She cannot faithfully categorize this one.

"A Gryffindor, no doubt."

Hermione looks down at the paper and winces. It is indeed a fellow Gryffindor.

"It makes you wonder…" he starts in a melodious climb that he would usually take when he explained a matter too subtle for his pupils. He does not go on with his thought and she waits patiently, but he simply returns to his work.

Hermione does the same.

The dead silence that reigns over the dungeons is usually unpleasant, but it never seems to reach Professor Snape's study, even when they are both perfectly quiet. She has never realized this so fully until tonight.

Soon, the cold is seeping into her cramped fingers and she has to wrestle with herself to keep writing. She does not wish to deprive the fourth-year Hufflepuff of the much needed explanation on the correct counter-effects of the Chelidonium Miniscula Potion. She takes it as her moral duty. But she shivers and the shiver seems to travel into the ink pot which rattles when she dips the quill in.

Professor Snape hums disapprovingly.

He gets up rather suddenly, but not too suddenly, as all his movements seem half-delayed. He walks to the other end of the room where an empty hearth sleeps in the shadows.

With one flick of his wand a roaring fire breaks through the grey cold.

Hermione does not dare look towards the fire. She should thank him, or mutter some kind of acknowledgement, but she is trapped in her polite, but austere formalism.

She does not hear him walk back to the desk. He seems to be contemplating the fire, but again, she cannot see. She can only make suppositions which distract her from her task.

She does not know why she is always so obedient, so useful, so goddamned perfect in his presence. Every detention is the same. She never errs. Whatever task he sets her to, she will perform with taste and virtuosity. She is never too keen, for that would be a fault. She shows just the right amount of free will, and just the right amount of awareness that this time is not hers to spend freely. She does not enjoy these moments, but she does not hate them. And tonight, well, tonight is a bit different. It's not that he has never given her something interesting to delve into. In fact, grading assignments can become monotonous after you have mentally filed all the possible faulty combinations a student may come up with. But it feels like a different class of work, because it breaks their silent and begrudging partnership where she will work for him and solely him. She is working for the school now.

In the scheme of things, the explanation for her behavior is simple. She craves his approval because she will never have it and therefore, is committed to these detentions on the strength that they matter even more than the courses. But she is now months away from leaving Hogwarts and possibly never returning. Why she would still want to prove something is beyond her. She used to think she had overcome this phase in her fifth year, that she had accepted he would never be pleased, but it seems some habits hold you in their sway even after you have forgotten their purpose.

Hermione is absorbed by the two different planes; the Potion and the Master. She does not sense or see the figure behind her.

He places one hand on the back of her chair.

She hears his rumbling voice falling down her shoulders like water that drags you down, but never extinguishes a fire.

"Warm, Miss Granger?"

Hermione feels her toes curling into her plain black shoes, scratching at the leathery insides. The question is a second disruption. She grapples with it, but she cannot place it into a pattern. It should feel quaint, like the many questions he has asked her before, but she is broken up quite unexpectedly by the nature of the inquiry. She doesn't know why. If she turned right now to look at him, he would appear just as placid and humorless as before.

She does not have to turn. He moves back into his seat in the same half-delayed fashion. When he is seated, she pushes a stack of papers away and pretends to reach for the pot of ink. She catches his features. His eyes cast her an indifferent glance, as if to say "the fire is chiefly for me, but make use of it as you will".

She wonders if he even got up in the first place, or if that was a figment of her imagination. But now he is pulling back his sleeves and rubbing his wrists. She realizes, stupidly, that she also feels a dull pain in her hands from writing so mercilessly, but has, until this moment, ignored it completely. She puts down her quill tentatively, and then, she also pulls back her sleeves.

Severus watches her as she moves her fingers over her skin, twisting and turning, making the bones crack emptily. She is a mirror of his actions, only hers are imbued with the certainty that she will escape reflection.

When he stops, she stops too. They stare at each other in a common-place fashion, he with guarded condescension, she with cold benevolence.

"It makes you wonder," he starts again, the thought he had never finished, "why you belong there."

He expects her to immediately comprehend his meaning and she does, for their dialogue is so sparse that his previous remark about Gryffindors sticks out like a rusty nail.

She looks down at the essay she has covered in red and says matter-of-factly, as if she were telling a casual acquaintance:

"I don't suppose I belong anywhere."

The third disruption which settles matters straight; this detention is like no other.

She fears she has irretrievably tainted these moments where she is simply a student and he is just another cruel teacher. But he goaded her, he caused the disruption. Her reply, consequently, does not belong to this realm and is duly ignored by Professor Snape. Perhaps he realizes it was his fault.

"You may leave now. Don't be late for curfew, Miss Granger."

Being Head Girl means she can eschew curfew. He knows this. But she puts down the quill in the exact same position she had found it and rises precariously.

His eyes catch the movement of her figure emerging from heavy waters.

She walks blindly to her schoolbag and grabs the knob on the door.

"Tomorrow night, same time," he instructs.

She does not remember nodding, but she is sure of her acquiescence because her whole body protests when she is wrenched from the warmth of the study into the glacial corridor.

It is only when she is already climbing towards the Gryffindor tower that she realizes her detention does not extend for another night. But he has the power to do so, preemptively.

She suspects tomorrow in class he will be particularly vicious.

"Tell me, Miss Granger, does critical thought ever inform the pedantic information which you insist on delivering so coarsely?"

Hermione winces. She has sought books that are not found on his recommended list. He is furious.

"Or are you incapable of separating the notions of theory and claim?"

"I was not claiming –"

"No, you were postulating from sources which are not credible and, what is more, ridiculous. Twenty points from Gryffindor. Another ten for insubordination."

She remains suspended in her anger and acceptance. The toes curl inside her plain black shoes.

"And since you have shared those inane books with Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley, thus contaminating the studying environment, you will see me in detention."

Redundant statement, really. He had already told her, the night before. He had told her she would come again. She had been right.

Hermione dips the quill into her ink pot and thinks about dipping it in his.